Happy New Year 2010

For the past three days, I been reading on the cheese blogs and news feeds about the best cheeses of 2009. I was surprise to read that so many people are recommending Mont d'Or, as I also like it a lot.

I first discovered Mont d'Or in Ireland while working at Sheridan's Cheesemongers. They sell the big wheel and so you can buy a slice of this creamy, pungent, luscious cheese. In the US and Canada you can only buy small wheels (retail price US$35).

Because of it's format, and because it does not keep well once opened, I recommend that you eat it all at once. You can eat it in spoon fulls over a nice crusty bread and pair it with bubbly wine for your NYE celebration.

While cleaning boxes that we have stored in Will's parents house, he found some of my first cheese notes from a class we took together. Funny enough I had written down "cheedar > Brie," for the amount of pressure used to make those cheeses. Little did I know that almost a decade later I would be writing a cheese blog.

2009 was by far my best cheese year, not just because I had the honor to be a supreme judge at the World Cheese Awards or because I traveled around tasting cheese. It was the best because after going to Chiapas twice, now I know that cheese makers there have a good chance of earning a decent livelihood with their product.

Cheese for me should not be considered an elite food, but the craftmanship should be regarded as high skill and honored as such.

Mont d'Or is a perfect example. While you can pair it with fancy Champagne, the most interesting thing about this cheese is that is made with the same milk as Comte. Cheesemakers change to the production of Mont d'Or in the middle of the fall when cows start producing less milk and the flavor changes too much to keep making Comte.

They use everything that is available and hold the cheese with a piece of bark that infuses the cheese with a very distinct forest flavour, imagine tasting some of the logs in the fire place.

I am guessing those cheesemakers like changing the cheese that they make to keep things interesting, but always within the thing they know: Cheese.

For 2010, I have big plans within the things I know best. I will be doing field work for my PhD and will be helping Mexican cheesemakers enter their cheeses for the World Cheese Awards.

I hope you all have a great beginning of the year and thank you for reading. Happy 2010.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone.